The Third Option
by Kiteman
Summary: Max is confronted with either sacrificing her best friend or the future of her friends. But are there really no other choices than these two? A near 2k word one-shot, based on the finale of the game.


THE THIRD OPTION

"And Max Caulfield? Don't you forget about me..." Chloe said, as she walked off, from the lighthouse.

"Never", Max responded, as she looked upon the tornado, as it made it's way towards Arcadia Bay.

She needed a moment to herself, to fully comprehend what she is about to do. To accept that this is how it has to end.

"Cheer up, Max", a voice said to Max. As Max turned around, she could see a reflection of herself. The one that she saw in her nightmare.

"What, is this a-"

"Unfortunately no, Max. This isn't a nightmare, this is real. This is happening right now."

"Then what are you doing here? How can I...how can I even see you?!" Max responded

"Think of me as sort of an imaginary friend", Max's reflection said, in a more softer and calm tone, than the one she used in Max's nightmare. "I'm here because I want to let you know that, this is the only choice you have to make Max. The last one.

Every decision, from that moment in the bathroom. Kate's suicide attempt. Alternate Timelines. Jefferson. It all always leads to us, here, next to a lighthouse, watching our home be torn apart."

Max is afraid, and her reflection can see it.

"Listen to me, Max", the reflection said to Max. "You have a choice where you can leave Arcadia Bay with her, but at the cost of hundreds dying. There isn't a third option here. In every scenario where you use your rewind powers to save Chloe, it leads up to this. The only thing we can do now...is let Chloe go, in peace."

"Peace? She'll end up bleeding out in some bathroom! She won't see her mother again, she won't fix things with David, and the last memory she'll have of me is that I abandoned her when she needed me the most! And now...now I'm left with killing her?

For what? To save Arcadia Bay?"

Max's reflection looked at the tornado.

"To save the people inside Arcadia Bay. The town ends up destroyed either way." Max's reflection finally said, after a long pause, as Max looked at her in suspense and disbelief.

"Wait...what did you-?"

"Prescott owns Blackwell. As soon as Nathan gets arrested for murder and they discover Jefferson was using a Prescott-funded bunker to deliver his sick photo shoots, no one will want to have any business with the Prescott's ever again." Max's reflection said, as Max's intense stare started to shift. "Blackwell will close, and the students you've met and made friends with will move on, and a portion of the people you know from Arcadia Bay will also do that. You'll be saving the people in the town, not the town itself."

Max started to think this through, but her reflection still insisted.

"This becomes more black and white now, Max. You sacrifice one, you save the lives of many", her reflection says. "You...you give everyone a new future with...with Chloe's death."

Max's eyes started watering and her heart sinked even more. This choice was tearing her apart the more she thought of it, but the fact that she was leaning to the option to let Chloe die, makes her sick.

Max tried to think of any other alternative to this, but there wasn't any. Reviewing every reality she was in, what could she have changed to avoid this? If there even is a way to avoid this.

She dropped to her knees, as she looked at the tornado reaching the shores of the beaches of Arcadia Bay.

"Max. The time has come. It's time to...to get this over with-"

"...wait", Max said, with her eyes wide open, from realizing something.

"...M-Max?" Her reflection's voice quickly distorted.

"Jefferson killed Chloe, I...I saw it and...the tornado still appeared."

Max's reflection froze, as Max looked at her aggressively, as she stood up to her own reflection.

"Well? Explain that, so-called Imaginary friend?!"

Max's reflection quickly started to nod in a sense where she was saying "No" repeatedly.

"No no, you don't understand, just...just...Max, I know this is hard for-"

"Yes, you do! You're a part of me, I get it! But what are you not telling me?!"

Max's reflection couldn't say anything, as her reflection started to get more and more nervous. Max then quickly realized something.

"It's me. I'm the reason for the tornado to appear. The tornado doesn't want Chloe dead, it wants Arcadia Bay destroyed and the only one that got in the way of that was me. Every time I rewinded time, more and more signs of this happening quickly started to appear."

Max's reflection didn't realize where she was going with this, until...

"There's still a way to save Chloe and Arcadia Bay's people."

...until she said that.

"I have to...I have to sacrifice myself to save them both."

Max's reflection widened up her eyes in desperation.

"No...no! You're...you're delusional! This is the only way, Max! We have to sacrifice Chloe, please just...just listen to me!"

"That's why you wanted me to doubt her. To hate her, in my nightmare. To make it easier for me to sacrifice her and make...us survive. By doing this, the Prescott's will leave, Chloe will live, and I will give a future to my people."

Max's reflection looked at the tornado once more, as they both saw it reach the houses, near the beach.

"If you do this...we're...we're..."

"We'll do this. We have to. This past week...it has been the best of my life...it was..." Max was saying, breaking down in tears, she remembered what Chloe said. "It was the best farewell gift I could've hoped for."

Her reflection was on her knees, crying, but the real Max wasn't scared, or sad anymore. She wiped the tears off her face, and made a decision.

The final decision.

She focused on the picture of the blue butterfly, but her reflection wasn't having this. Her reflection ran towards Max, begging her to stop.

But Max didn't listen to her own, selfish reflection. It was just that. Her selfish ego, personified, only wanting the best for herself. Max wasn't that person anymore. She wasn't going to be remembered like this, because she's more than that.

* * *

Before she knew it, she was in that bathroom for the third, and final time. She stood up and looked around. No Nathan to be found just yet.

"You don't realize what you're doing." Max's reflection said, as she was right behind Max.

"I have to...this is the choice I've made, and it's a choice that'll matter to the future of everyone." Max said, with her reflection's disapproval.

"But we can build our own future!", Max's reflection said, as she was holding Max's arms. "We can't throw it away for-"

"We're not throwing it away. We're making a sacrifice.", Max said as she held hands to her imaginary friend. Max chuckled: "Isn't that what Everyday Heroes do?"

Nathan entered the bathroom. He started talking to himself in the bathroom mirror. Chloe walks in and they start arguing.

Max nodded to her reflection, as she saw her own reflection scared.

Nathan takes out the gun and starts pointing it at Chloe. Max realizes that this is it for her, and she wouldn't have it any other way.

Max came out of the side of the bathroom, going towards Nathan. Chloe saw her first, then Nathan.

Max yelled "Leave her alone, you asshole!", and as soon as she said that, Nathan quickly turns the gun towards Max and pulls the trigger. Max stops completely, as the bullet is shot through her chest, she falls to her knees.

This is it.

Max falls to the ground, as her vision starts to slowly darken, she starts to feel the pain and scream. She can see Nathan getting desperate, while Chloe yells and pushes him away. She holds Max, trying to close the wound with the towels from the bathroom, but it isn't much use.

David storms in and is shocked by what he is seeing. He pulls Nathan from the bathroom and handcuffs him, leaves him on the ground, as he goes to help Chloe.

Max, in her final moments, held onto Chloe. With her last energy, she gave Chloe her journal. Max said "Keep it", in a low, weak voice, as Chloe nodded, while tears dropped from her eyes.

She held onto Chloe's hand, as tight as she could. Until her last breath.

Max's hand wasn't moving, as it dropped to the ground. Chloe looked at her hand, and then Max's face. It was a blank stare, her eyes were wide open, but there was no life in them.

Chloe held onto her friend's body, while she wept and screamed for what seemed like an eternity.

* * *

Chloe was standing next to the lighthouse bench, as she was getting ready for her friend's funeral. She held onto a shot of a blue butterfly, the one that Max took in the bathroom. It had drops of her blood.

Chloe knew she would hold onto this picture for the rest of her life. It means too much to her now.

She wants to hold onto the journal, too, even if she doesn't want to read it just yet. She's not ready to read about what Max has been doing for the past years, atleast not now.

She wiped the tears off her face, and got ready to go the Cementery, along with her Blackwell friends.

Leading the way were Max's parents. They held onto each other in pain, and Chloe couldn't take it. She cried as well, as well as Kate Marsh and Warren Graham, two of Max's only friends at Blackwell.

As the funeral ended, and Chloe went home with her mom and step-father, when she arrived home, she quickly went up the stairs, locked herself up in her room and broke down right there. For hours upon hours, she spent them crying.

When she woke up, in the morning, she was still in her funeral clothes, and she didn't want to get up. She looked at the roof of her room for a long time, until something caught her attention: A blue butterfly entered the room, from the window, and sat in Chloe's hand.

Chloe looked at it, in a hypnotized way. It looks just like the one from the shot that Max took, and it deeply saddened her.

The blue butterfly then quickly flew away, towards Chloe's table, and sat on Max's journal.

Chloe, trying to wipe off the tears in her eyes, sat up and went towards the table. As the blue butterfly flew away from the journal, she took a moment to take a breath and open up the journal. The journal apparently takes place far from when she started at Blackwell.

It took her a while and effort to read this, but she was happy that Max was happy during all these years, from when they were separated.

Then she stumbled upon the page from October 7th.

It started with "This will be the weirdest journal entry I will ever make."

As soon as she would start reading this entry, his perspective on Max would completely change.


End file.
